Crossing the East West divide : new perspectives on East-West interaction

Abstract

This doctorate proposes a new conceptual framework for studies of Asia that relates human values, knowledge and understanding, and is developed through a pedigogical design that provides students withinvestigative skills to develop analytical and synthesising approaches for learning about Asia. Such pedgogy requires the intellectual development of skills to access new knowledge within and across discipline structures, and to draw upon alternate viewpoints and dialoguesfrom Asia to develop intercultural understanding. Consequently, the proposed conceptual framework has implications for teachers who formulate knowledge as their values determine the nature and construction of curriculum content and imagery. Teachers at the point of construction and delivery of curriculum control the central focus, inclusions, exclusions and the tone by which constructed knowledge is delivered. The various components in the portfolio are designed to support this conceptual framework. They argue for the need for research skills in order to access knowledge which reduces and/or resolves conflict and which informs educators and students about the emergence of networking in time and space across the East-West divide. The papers argue that a perception of common interests is necessary to develop coexistence and cooperation. The components of the portfolio are sequenced so they critique and evaluate tone and overlays of "otherness" in key resources and then challenge restricted definitions of Asia currently applied in Australian schools. It is argued that confining Asia to the Asia-Pacific region cannot adequately address the intellectual, religious and political attitudes and issues that evolved out of contact between Western Asia and Europe. The papers also demonstrate that a new research methodology is required that is capable of generating tolerance, connectivity and understanding, and that this entails a transdisciplinary approach to develop knowledge and understanding. The final published paper advocates a new theoretical framework to access multiple perpectives before material is filtered through value-coloured lenses, whilst the Portrait (Volume 2) provides the knowledge resource to make this possible.

Date of Award	1999
Original language	English